Time management has certainly been an absolute shit show for me.
Feeling like you’re fighting an ongoing battle with time and always losing is awfully painful.
Because time is of course one of the most precious resources each of us has, and it’s the one thing that all of us would like more of.
My time management skills used to come straight out of hell.
Firstly, I had a habit of wanting to do everything in one day. And at the same time, I’d also assume that everything I wanted to do in that day was only going to take five minutes.
This sordid combination made for a very miserable existence.
Luckily, things have changed.
As is often the case, the first step in dealing with my awful bloody battle with time was awareness, I had to recognise and acknowledge that my current beliefs just weren’t working.
The first thing I realised was that while I could knock over plenty of jobs in a day, I couldn’t knock over 1,000 of them. And, I realised that everything wasn’t only going to just take a few minutes, because as my mate Gazza says, there’s nothing that really only takes five minutes in life.
So now I:
Put less jobs on the List, but Know That I'll Actually Achieve Them
I plan for some important goals in a year in all areas of my life, but only a few of them.
I don’t put too many things on my list, because I only disappoint myself and lose motivation if I do this.
As Mike Michalowicz says in his book Profit First, we all need to work with human psychology and harness our motivation to keep ourselves going, rather than fight against human psychology and kill our motivation.
I also write less jobs into my diary, which is a tool I absolutely rely on to run my life and my business.
When I write out my jobs for the day ahead, writing less jobs on the list allows me to actually achieve at least most of them. And I have to say, a bit of white space and tidiness on the day’s page has also been a massive relief.
Use the 30 Minute Trick
I also now schedule jobs for 30 minutes minimum, which has not only helped me in allocating jobs in my personal life, but has also helped me in allocating jobs in my professional life.
Now don’t get me wrong, it is of course very important to schedule for set outcomes within that 30 minute time frame, rather than just “spending” 30 minutes doing something.
But 30 minutes is great because it’s long enough to achieve something, though not that long that the job feels off putting. And this strategy has helped me achieve bigger longer term goals because it helps me slot them into my day and my month. And bit by bit, these goals get achieved.
The other good thing about the 30 minute slot is that if I happen to complete the job in less than 30 minutes, great, I can do something enjoyable.
Plan for Months and Years, Rather Than Hours and days
I don’t plan to achieve more significant goals within days or weeks any more, I plan to achieve my goals using months. This makes achieving my goals possible, and allows in built flexibility if an absolute cluster of a week happens at some point.
As long as I make sure that the steps required to achieve such goals are written into my diary throughout the year, I can achieve my goals with plenty of flexibility and less stress along the way.
This strategy has been great for me, because it recognises that the weeks, months and years do rocket along quickly. And it removes unnecessary pressure when I’m busy working on multiple goals and projects. Because, like a lot of people, I’m the sort of person who likes their life busy. And I know that my life is never going to get less busy because I have so many things that I want to do with it. And each year, less of my life to live.
I’m lucky because thanks to having lived a few more years of adulthood, I’m not surprised by the fact that the years will fly by, this fact is now simply known and expected. I’ve also personally benefitted from knowing some amazing people in their 80’s, who tell me that for them, the distance between January and December has become tiny, and shrinks even further every year.
I’m so grateful for these people because they helped me realise that I had to take control of time by coming from behind it, rather than always desperately scrambling as time evaporated in front of me like a mirage on the horizon.
By coming from behind time, I mean being aware that it won’t be that long until I’m 75 years of age, and instead looking at time as if I was actually 75. This realisation has been such a positive for me, because it’s made me aware that I only have a set number of years on this planet and I need to use those years in the best way possible. And of course, not worry about a few minor bugs on the windscreen along the way.
Block off Time in my Diary
I love my yearly diary.
Flipping through a blank (or blank-ish diary) is like looking at a beautiful smorgasbord of possibilities, and I absolutely love writing something into it, knowing that how I spend my year and my time is entirely up to me.
A diary allows me to build in time for me and for important projects. For example, I like to take short holidays throughout the year, rather than taking four weeks of holidays at one time. So I simply block a week off in my diary every quarter (and diarise putting messages and auto replies on phones and emails to ensure other people know I’m not available), and I book jobs around that. Entering commitments, important project time and holidays in my diary builds a rock solid fort around them that I absolutely love. And doing so recognises that time will move along quickly, so the sooner the important things are blocked off, the better. My next week off is actually approaching next week, and I’d almost forgotten all about it until a few weeks ago. Happy news!
In summary, I’ve still got plenty to learn in relation to managing my time more effectively, but I hope one or two of the above tips helps someone.
© Annemaree Jensen